Would you like sugar and cream with your coffee? - Day 2: Wednesday, 20/1/2010

Some of us take either or both and some drink it black, but most of us reading this drink coffee in some fashion. After today, I have had to realize that there is a very basic human rights issue involved with every cup we drink.

Today I walked through a coffee plantation. The trees are kept short by pruning so that the beans are easy to pick. Trees with bumper crops had limbs bending to touch the ground much as I remember my grandpa’s apple trees which he used to prop up so that branches didn’t break under the load. When I saw the number of beans on a tree, I bed there is not more than a five pounds of beans on a tree, which means a lot of land much be used to grow coffee.

Next to the plantation was farm land. As I looked down and saw the red earth, (that is the common color of soil here) I asked Benson, our guide and catechist at Thika Memorial Parish if the soil was fertile. He pointed to the farm land where lush green crops were growing and said yes. He pointed to the ground beneath the trees and said no because so many chemicals are used in the production of the coffee.

Now I could make a point about land usage or the usage of chemicals, but that is not my main point. Passing through the plantation on the other side was a small village of mud huts where people are living on less than a dollar a day. These are the same people who work the coffee plantations and pick our coffee. Are we willing to participate in this vulgar injustice simply to have a cheaper cup of coffee? Dare I name brands that use coffee for which the workers are paid practically nothing? Now think about it, the workers are paid, but they must find ways to exist on less than a dollar a day (if you can call that existing). Except for the fact that they could refuse to work under these conditions (though they may not be able to find other work) are these workers any better off than slaves who subsist in owner provided shacks and in fact may have more to eat and full stomach when they go to bed?

I had been buying fair trade coffee until recently, but like so many in these tougher times, I have been cutting corners and buying other coffee. After today, if I buy cheap coffee again I know that my conscience will convict me of inhuman conditions under which these people live. If enough people insist on buying only fair trade coffee, it can only increase the wages paid to the workers. Everyone is entitled to a living wage.

Not only coffee, but now I must investigate other fairly traded products for the fact that they exist must mean that other workers are being exploited elsewhere.

I ask all of you to consider joining me in doing something to improve the lives of these workers rather than to pad the wallets of plantation owners and coffee companies that are blinded to the plight of their workers because of greed.

Giving up coffee is not the answer; I just need to make sure the coffee I drink is fairly traded. That means I need to join a movement to help force restaurants to serve fair trade coffee too.

There must be a long list of human rights issues in the production of our food. Attempting to make a difference will feed our souls as we feed our stomachs with the food on our daily plates. Those, whose human rights are being violated, might just have an empty plate this evening.